


All I Have is a Voice

by butterbrain



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Drabble Collection, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Psychological Horror, Supernatural Elements, Surreal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-06-24 14:28:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19725520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butterbrain/pseuds/butterbrain
Summary: Every citizen of Broadchurch has a ghost to reckon with.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Alec sustains a head injury when he retrieves Pippa's body from the river. While he waits for backup, he and Pippa have a chat.

The phrase, “In Memory of Alec Hardy,” by which Hardy’s person would soon be remembered, blinked on and off between the more coherent thoughts of Hardy’s soupy mind. More distantly than this bleak epitaph, a sense of his own immortality made itself apparent, and Hardy felt sure that he had clung to the lap of this river bank, not for mere minutes, but for many years -- his mind waning into white noise, only to wax again into a bright circle of clarity. 

Feeling oddly claustrophobic, he twined his fingers through the grass around his body and, although a distant, murky, boyish instinct urged him to snatch the grass out of the earth, as he had often done before, Hardy found himself gently twining and untwining. The sharp edge of his watch snagged on a clover, and Hardy maneuvered to release it, though this was made difficult by his trembling hands.

It was also made difficult by Pippa Gillespie, whose limp, waterlogged body lay clasped to Hardy’s. He’d jostled her in his scramble to release the watch on his wrist, and then his bright circle of clarity bloomed, and he remembered her. Remembered why he was wet, why his body felt laden with the weight of a large millstone. 

“Would you miss me?” Pippa said.

With a jerk, Hardy saw that his fingers were carefully tangled, not in wet grass, but in the long, matted hair hanging in a curtain around Pippa’s face. 

“If I disappeared,” Pippa continued. “No one would miss me.”

“I would miss you,” Hardy said. 

“You have a daughter.”

“Daisy.”

“Do you miss her?” 

Hardy bundled Pippa up tighter in his arms, and a bubble of river water slipped out of Pippa’s mouth and slid down the shoulder of Hardy’s jacket. He closed his eyes and, gripping Pippa’s stiff hair, he called back the images of dewy grass and clovers.

“I miss her every day,” he whispered. “I never stop missing her.”

“You can feel it forever. You can look at the same sky, the same stars and love them forever.”

“Some stars go dark,” Hardy said.

* * *

He waited many minutes for Pippa to respond until finally he knew that she wouldn’t. The same bright circle of clarity that brought her back to him waxed suddenly, painfully, and Hardy knew that Pippa’s open eyes didn’t see him, that her mouth remained a dark, lax, useless hole; that she was hurt into something that hurts to look at.

Gently, and keeping his eyes closed, Hardy rolled Pippa over onto the ground. He lacked the strength to pull himself far away from her, so Hardy turned his back to her, and they rested beside each other like two corpses to a single grave. 

Facing away from Pippa, it was safe again for Hardy to open his eyes, and so he did. The river, angry with floodwater, roiled toward a secluded copse, from which a number of officers -- all the hounds of Europe, it seemed -- emerged. On the bank, the floor of a limestone wood was favoured with a meadow of wild white and blue flowers, of grass and of clovers. Even of a few daisies. 

The officers drew closer to Hardy. Looking at the flowers, he had the urge to clear the ground, to look out and see nothing.

  
  
  
  



	2. I Have No Gun But I Can Spit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Joe is arrested for the murder of Danny Latimer, Ellie has to live with her own ghosts.

There is the pain of losing Joe, of having Joe, and there is the pain of being alone. 

She can hardly bear it these days, to think of herself in these terms. To think of herself as herself. When she must run an errand, Ellie steps into her alter ego, The Dark Tourist, who gobbles up Ellie’s tasks with a morbid fascination for life. Packing a jar of sweet pickles into her trolley, Ellie’s Dark Tourist takes a few seconds to wonder at the neatly-packed aisles and bright fluorescents of the grocer’s. 

_I never would have believed_ _it_ , The Dark Tourist says. _This is the same town where all those terrible things happened. Not nearly as grim as they made it out in the papers._

Former Ellie Miller had more bite than does Now Ellie Miller, and when a shop goer slows their stride to fix their heavy, hate-filled eyes on Ellie, she lets her Dark Tourist stare back with mean curiosity. 

_What’s this? A native. Look at the savagery in its eyes, the fear. It makes one shudder._

This is a coping device Ellie has not disclosed to her therapist, though her therapist has noticed a “marked difference” in Ellie’s stress level. 

“Every morning I zip myself up into an armor, and every night I step out of it again.” 

“That’s really good work, Ellie. I’m so proud of you.” 

“Every morning I zip myself into tiny pieces, and every night I zip them back together.” 

“Amazing progress.” 

“Every morning I zip my tiny pieces away in a box, and every night I eat them again.” 

“I really am proud of you.” 

Ellie does keep a ritual that she performs for long hours in the morning and night. She stares at herself in the bathroom mirror. She swears that she didn’t look so haggard two months ago. She spends hours studying the woman in the mirror, and she wonders if she could join herself inside there. Then they would be two tiny pieces, slotted together, and when people went looking for evil Ellie Miller, they’d be mystified to only find her reflection.

Of course she hasn’t really lost anyone. Each of them has just changed into someone else, including her. She has received long, preposterous letters from her sister, detailing how well Tom is getting on. He’s done this and that at school. He spends long hours out of the house, down at the beach. Tom himself has yet to write her. 

Even so, Ellie answers each letter with an air of good cheer: dear Tom, how’s the project coming? I hear you’re doing very well in your art class. I’d love to see some of what you’re making when we get together next. I thought you and your aunt Lucy might like to have some of the iris bulbs I brought from the house. Might brighten things up a bit. 

Ellie herself can’t say what it was that the irises said to her. Joe had bought the first bulbs for her just last year at a plant sale, and ever since they’ve been plucking emotions out of her. She’s sure they can’t have said anything at all; all the same she’s dragged them out of the flower bed and slung them (first in the bin, and then) on the table to be sent away as gifts. 

This too wrings pain out of her


End file.
